Locals trip in finals

STOCKTON - Three local wrestlers finished second Saturday in the Sac-Joaquin Section Masters wrestling championships at Stockton Arena.

Dave Campbell

STOCKTON - Three local wrestlers finished second Saturday in the Sac-Joaquin Section Masters wrestling championships at Stockton Arena.

Trent Nicholson of Kimball battled with Merced's Mark Taijeron in the 132-pound final and nearly got a reversal at the end but could not pull it off, losing 6-5.

By finishing in the top seven in his weight class, the Kimball junior is returning to the state championships, where he went 3-2 last year but did not medal.

"Hopefully this year I can get on the medal stand at state," Nicholson said of the tournament that begins Friday at Rabobank Arena in Bakersfield. "But this was a tough loss. It wasn't horrible, but it's not what I wanted."

Ripon's Trevor Smith (195) trailed Jeramy Sweany of Vacaville 4-1 going into the third period of their title match and came on strong at the end but ran out of time, losing 6-3.

Argonaut's Zack Velasquez (152) was defeated 16-1 in the finals by Shane Tucker of Fair Oaks-Bella Vista, but the sophomore has nothing to hang his head about. Tucker, a senior, did not have any of his matches in the two-day contest go the distance, posting a pin and four technical falls.

With a trip to state on the line, the seventh-place matches had a sense of urgency that the others did not.

West's Rogelio Bravo (152) took that urgency to the extreme, reactivating an ankle injury in the second period to fall behind 5-4 going into the third. With 18 seconds remaining, the West senior got a reversal for a 6-5 lead and held on for the rest of the match for the coveted seventh-place finish.

Dominic Freesha (152) of Tokay also had a one-point victory for seventh place, and teammate Anthony Sorbera (160) had an eight-point major decision to also earn a trip to Bakersfield.

Vacaville ran away with the team championship by nearly a 2-1 margin over second-place Folsom, 244 points to 127.5. Kimball finished 11th with 65.5 points.

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